You've all been sending us this think piece from today's Washington Post about how everyone feels so sorry for Hillary Clinton because she reminds men of their first wives. AYE DE MI ENVIA LOS BONERKILLERS! (BOEHNERKILLERS?) So yeah, I Nexis-ed that, and guess what? Republican pollster Frank Luntz said this TWELVE YEARS AGO. Twelve years ago as in, when Lush was on the radio. As in, more than a decade before a preponderantly Republican-appointed court decided banning gay marriage was unamerican, before a certain first wife's gasbag ex-husband devoted a decade of his life to reexamining the life and character of Hillary Clinton, and 12 years before Peggy Noonan pointed out, as she did today, that "Republicans are losing because they are losers." Megan and I cosign after the jump.

MOE: I'll be back in 10. If you have any ideas about what the fuck we should talk about (besides IT'S FRIDAY) I would be stokedMEGAN:This?MOE: I actually did read that. It reminded me of BangieB.
8:30 AMMEGAN: Oh. My. God. Apparently, the New Kids on the Block are performing live at Rockefeller Center today?MEGAN:Right the fuck now!
8:40 AMMEGAN: This may be the first time I've ever seen this many women our age in one place since I went to see the anniversary of Dirty Dancing. Also, there's no "background" track and they, um, kind of suck and are playing a medley. No, I take it back, Joey's pretty good. The background dancers outfits were pretty inexplicable except that they looked like they were from when NKOTB was popular. [This mini recap provided possibly solely for the benefit of my childhood friend Caroline]MEGAN: Wow, Marky Mark is the much more talented brother.MOE: Um understatement sorta? Although did you ever see that VH1 special where Donny was talking about how he thought he was Liberace? It was kind of priceless.MEGAN: No, but now I totally want to. Also, that was 2.5 minutes of my life I will never get back.MEGAN: Ok, so, other serious stuff? The people that owe the copyright to Curious George are going to due over those monkey T-shirts.MOE: To due?MOE: hahaMOE: Kidding!MOE: Sorry I'm still trying to locate my keys.MEGAN:

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"We find it offensive and obviously utterly out of keeping with the value Curious George represents," said spokesman Rick Blake. "We're monitoring the situation and weighing our options with respect to legal action."

But, hey, at least the bar owner acknowledges that calling a black person a "monkey" is racist and offensive, but defends the shirt because in this instance he thinks this particular black person looks like an actual monkey, so he's just pointing out the obvious.MEGAN: Sorry, *sue. I haven't had my coffee yet.MOE: Wait also can I take this moment with the readers of the News Roundup to say: that stuff yesterday about Bush equating Obama with Hitler and invading Burma to give them aid or whatever...yeah, SORRY. At the end of the day I can get "deliberately inaccurate." We should talk about this though maybe and Neville Chamberlain. And Chris Matthews.MEGAN: Ha, guess it takes the grandson of a Nazi sympathizer to know what an appeasing Nazi sympathizer looks like?
9:00 AMMEGAN: Also, if there's anyone in the world that hasn't seen said Chris Matthews video, it's here.MOE: Yeah I believe we've cut it down and are intending to quicklink itMEGAN: Cool, I mean, the entire thing is worth sort of watching if you like yelling and watching right wing guys have to admit that they're stupid and know nothing of history or of which they speak.MEGAN: I don't like yelling in the morning, I believe I'm on record on that point, so it makes me idgy.MOE: Yeah I feel like I have gotten a pretty good idea from the numerous transcripts I've read. When was the last time this happened? Was it with some Obama superdelegate in Texas? Are we condemned to talk about the same idiotic pundit fuckups if we don't remember them? Why do people not Wikipedia the stuff they're scheduled to talk to Chris Matthews about? And gay marriage back on the ballot...that wasn't good for the Dems in 2004, right? I think I remember at least that.MEGAN: But now they're all opposed to gay marriage! It's civil unions, see? Separate but equal! Plessy v Ferguson! They're like regular rights, only better. Like decaf coffee. Plus, Obama and Newsom don't get along.MOE: Joanna Newsom?MOE: I don't get along with her.
9:15 AMMEGAN: Gavin, the gay-marrying mayor of San Francisco. Used to be married to Kimberly, boned his best friend's wife, has a drinking problem, is marrying a blonde and is cute but smarmy.MOE: Oh yeah THAT guy. Well to Barry's credit wasn't one of Jeremiah Wright's distant supposed strong suits that...oh whatever. The biggest thing about the California decision having been handed down from this supposedly conservative court is that it's one of those crazy moments where you're like, "whoa maybe a profound shift in the conventional wisdom TOWARD THE RATIONAL for once in my adult life?" Like what's happening with financial regulation and diplomacy sorta?? Or am I just happy it's Friday?
9:20 AMMEGAN: I mean, there's "rational" and then there's "rational." The reason the fundies want a gay marriage amendment is that the DOMA only says that gay marriages don't have to be recognized by other states and won't be by the federal government. But even fucking Scalia thinks there's a decent case the DOMA is unconstitutional, and that having gay marriages recognized in some states and not in others (and thus gay divorce only possible in some states and not others) is how advocates will get the DOMA overturned. So, it's rational on an ethical level, agreed, but it's probably also rational on a legal level if you're, say, a strict Constitutionalist like the fundies all want on the Court except they don't want to "strictly" interpret things like gay marriage or the 2nd Amendment.MOE: Okay so like we got that "Poor Hillary" thing and I remember when Republican pollster Frank Luntz said Clinton reminds certain men of their first wives but it was NOT to Libby Copeland and it was not recently is it? Ugh.MEGAN: No, but she brings it up. I think I brought it up yesterday, too. What, so, like, it's a bad thing that men marry smart ambitious women who spend a great deal of their lives helping their husbands' careers to the detriment of their own? Who, having done so and then watched their husbands (though, not Hillary's husband) leave them for younger, usually stupider women think, well, hey, part of that big house and salary came from me giving things up and so I should get recognition of that? Is this what Frank Luntz is saying? Also, Frank Luntz is a fat, stupid fuck who probably has to pay for sex despite being famous-for-DC and even John Boehner doesn't like him.MOE: hahaha you said boehner
9:30 AMMEGAN: Well, I'd bet Luntz says boner a lot, too, in his online sex chats.MOE: Here is the thing I guess. Like, it's just so sickening that notion of my "poor" first wife. Your "poor'" first wife would probably feel sorry for you, if she wasn't busy feeling sorry for all the people whose kids are starving and suffocating beneath the ruins of natural disaster, so at best she probably feels mild weary contempt for you, which brings me back to Nora Ephron and Carl Bernstein, Hillary's foremost biographer. Ask Carl, Frank. Hillary is not interesting because she is "poor."
9:35 AMMOE: Oh fuck and I didn't read Peggy Noonan yet today!MEGAN: Yeah, I mean, when you lose some dead weight like an asshole ex-husband who doesn't appreciate you, why are you the "poor" one? Why are you the one who "lost"? It's like they think she's deluded or something, like she doesn't have a plan for what next or why she's doing it. If anyone has a plan, it's Hillary. I love how she's all the most conniving whatever until she's losing, and now she's all sad and shit.MOE: Yeah, like you are still feeling "sorry" for the woman you dumped 20 years ago? Well That is stupid. And to that end, here's Peggy!

The headline Wednesday on Drudge, from Politico, said, "Republicans Stunned by Loss in Mississippi." It was about the eight-point drubbing the Democrat gave the Republican in the special House election. My first thought was: You have to be stupid to be stunned by that. Second thought: Most party leaders in Washington are stupid - detached, played out, stuck in the wisdom they learned when they were coming up, in '78 or '82 or '94.

MEGAN: I know the Mississippi thing was amazing. It's the 3rd seat the Republicans have lost since the Dems took power. First Hastert's old seat, then Baker's and now Wicker's.MEGAN: Hahaha, fuckers, whose mad at Trent Lott now? Betcha all wish those gay rumors were true and that it wasn't that he was just sooooo steeped in Republican ideology that he got out while the getting was good to make more money and fuck the rest of y'all.MEGAN: God, she's kicking their asses today.

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They never guessed, back in '86, how government would pay off! They didn't know they'd stay! They came to make a difference and wound up with their butts in the butter. But affluence detaches, and in time skews thinking. It gives you the illusion you're safe, that everyone else is.

9:45 AMMEGAN: As though, ahem, they weren't all elitist pricks and shit when they got here.MOE: Well it doesn't detach enough that Tom Davis of Virginia couldn't "write" a 20-page memo house leaders saying "Members and pundits . . . fail to understand the deep seated antipathy toward the president, the war, gas prices, the economy, foreclosures."MEGAN: Tom Davis, who was forced out of power by the new Republican leadership for not being Republican'y enough.MOE: hahaha

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The party, Mr. Davis told me, is "an airplane flying right into a mountain."

It's the TERRORISTS WINNING.MEGAN: And who is retiring with a big "fuck you" to Boehner and Blunt. They'll be fucking lucky to hold his NoVa seat and he doesn't care.
9:50 AMMEGAN: I mean, the difference with Tom Davis is he goes home every night, and not to, say, Arlington and the expensive house like the one one of his colleagues (cough, Jim Moran, cough) shares with his trophy wife that he married just before his most contested election and whom I truly hope he doesn't beat half to death the way he did his first wife because no one deserves that.MOE: Wait, is America even questioning its own racism now?

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Could the party pivot from the president? I spoke this week to Clarke Reed of Mississippi, one of the great architects of resurgent Republicanism in the South...Is the Republican solid South over?
"Yeah. Oh yeah." He said, "I eat lunch every day at Buck's Cafe. Obama's picture is all over the wall."

MEGAN: Well, he doesn't say how it's on the wall.MEGAN: The difficulty with the GOP, as someone articulated on the boards yesterday, is it faces a significant internal ideological divide.MOE: Well isn't that because its ideological core is just fundamentally built upon being reactionary?MEGAN: They are the party of small government, of low taxes, of keeping the government out of the lives of every day people. And, since Reagan, they're also the party that isn't so keen on a strict interpretion on the separation of Church and state, that thinks the governments' role is teaching morals like when to have sex (or not) rather than providing information, that thinks the government should know — and then limit — what i do with my body.MOE: Reactionary, and insecure and cynical?MOE: Yeah but "small government" always equaled "state's rights" right?MEGAN: Well, and that too. But I think we would've still had some version of the PATRIOT Act after 9/11. There weren't a helluva lot of people opposing it then, let alone the Iraq War or the one in Afghanistan.MEGAN: Democrats, Republicans, whatever, everyone was singing God Bless America and hugging the flag and crying and Ground Zero and then forgetting what it was that makes it actually good to be an American, like not having your phones tapped without cause or the government looking at what books you're taking out of the library.